


Collective Insanity

by akelios



Series: Odd Jobs [2]
Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Gen, Humour, Kinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-17
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:37:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelios/pseuds/akelios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days in Harry's life are weirder than others. Thomas will never, ever admit that any of this happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collective Insanity

**Author's Note:**

> The My Little Pony incident referenced in the second half of Part-time Job.

“I think I'm going crazy.” She certainly looked the part. Ms. Laurenti, call me Heather, couldn't have gotten more than a few hours worth of sleep in the past few days. Her eyes were heavy lidded and shadowed, her hair was starting to escape the pony tail she had it in, flying in bits and wisps all over her head, giving her a mad, unkempt look. She hadn't bothered with any makeup and was pale. The pale of fright and exhaustion. Her eyes kept darting from the middle of my chest over to Thomas who was lounging against the wall behind me and back.

“Just relax and tell us what's going on. I'm sure we can do something to help you.” Nervous fingers tapped against the mug of coffee I'd handed her when she sat down and she bit her lip, worrying at it. Then she seemed to take a deep breath and decide. She set the mug down on my desk and pushed it away from the edge as though she was afraid it would leap off of its own free will.

“My dad collects things. All sorts of things. It's, I guess it's kind of an obsession. Collecting. He and my mother have plenty of money, and he's not irresponsible about it or anything, so it's basically okay. But they've got rooms and rooms full of stuff. There's a whole room full of doll house things. No doll houses, just the little things that go in them.” She shook her head and smiled a little, fondly. “Anyway. My parents are gone, they're taking a tour of the world. They won't be back for almost another year, and I'm alone in the house.

“I've never been alone before. Not at home. There's always been one or the other of them there. At first I thought it was just that, that I was weirded out by rattling around in the place by myself. But it's not. Or at least not just that. It started with noises. Shadows. Things I could dismiss.” Heather took a sip of her cooling coffee. “Then the things started moving. The dolls, at first. They'd be in the wrong position, or they'd switch spots on the shelves. Even when they're in cases, they'd get out somehow and switch! But at least everything stayed in its right room. Then things started getting from room to room somehow!

“I locked the rooms, put chairs in front of them. I even managed to drag one of the china hutches in front of the miniature room door. It never moved. I put flour all around it so I could see, and it never moved. But when I went in a few days later, the dolls were having a tea party in the middle of the floor. I can't figure out how they're doing it. I've been staying up, watching. I never see it. It always happens in one of the other rooms. It doesn't matter which room I pick, I never pick the right room.” Her voice had started out soft, tired, but it got stronger at the end. Angry and frustrated. She was sick of being messed with.

“It could be a couple of things. It sounds like a ghost, most likely. Have there been any recent deaths in the house, or renovations?”

“No. No. No deaths and we haven't done any work on the house since I was five.”

“Okay. I'll need to get into the house, take a look around and see what there is. It might take me a couple of days.”

“That's fine. I'm going to go and stay with friends for a week. I can't take it any more. I need sleep. I'm sick of watching for one of the dolls to come after me with a knife like in that movie.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a key, setting it down on the desk with a sharp click. “You have the address, and you can do whatever you need to do. I just want to come home and be able to live there.”

~

“Nice place. A bit crowded though.” Thomas was poking his nose into every room. He'd been through the miniature room, the doll room, the stuffed alligator room (and who knew there were that many versions of the stuffed alligator?), the purple room (I wasn't sure what the theme there was, really. Just that everything in it was the same shade of purple) and the glass doodads room.

“You didn't have to come, you know. This is likely going to be boring. Some random spirit got stirred up and went poltergeist is all. I'll catch it, lay it, and that'll be that.” I set out my kit on the dining room table and took a look around. The house felt peaceful enough. There was no feeling of being watched, of icy fingers on your spine. Just walking in I would never have guessed that there might be anything freaky going on at all.

“I want to see this whole PI shtick. You must get some really – holy shit! Harry! You've got to see this!” I could hear the laughter in his voice so I knew wasn't anything on the bad side of the scale.

Thomas was standing in the last doorway at the far end of the hall, hands braced against the walls, staring. I came up behind him and looked in over his shoulder. It was- it was nuts. The other rooms had been odd, but they had had a certain level of respectability, I guess. This room was a riot of pastel plastics. Small horse-like forms covered every available surface. It looked like a little girls' room gone psychotic. Even the curtains were My Little Pony.

“Wow. That is...that is actually kind of impressive. I didn't know they made that many of these things.” I pushed at Thomas' shoulder and he stumbled into the room, grinning and picked up the nearest of the things. He started making horse sounds and galloped the toy along the shelf, laughing. I followed him in, shaking my head. My brother was a child sometimes.

“Thomas, put that down. We need to get to wo-” Something hit the back of my head, hard. “Ow!” I turned in time to see the second pony gather itself and leap off the shelf.

~

“Hey, Thomas, how many of those ponies were on top of you?” My pen scratched against the paper in a steady pattern. We were back in the office. I'd bandaged my own wounds, a few bites here and there, not too bad since the things had no teeth, and one or two really tiny hoof shaped bruises. Thomas had come out a little worse. They'd gotten him down on the ground and been chewing on his hair before I blasted them off of him.

“What ponies?” I glanced up at him.

“Did you hit your head? The little plastic ones that were beating on us an hour ago. You remember?”

“No. No, I don't remember. There were no little plastic ponies. We went to the house and got beat up by a really mean ghost. Not toy horsies.” Thomas combed his hair back into place, trying to cover up the little bald spots.

“Um. No. It was sprites possessing the toys. I negotiated a treaty with them. They're moving into that toy store in the mall.”

“No. Nope. That's not what happened. Vicious ghost.” He tapped on my report with one long finger. “That's what you write down right now. Vicious. Ghost.”

“I'm not going to-”

“Then you leave me out of it. It was either an awful, violent ghost that I helped with, or you got your ass handed to you by a bunch of pixies in My Little Pony's all by yourself.”

“You're being ridiculous. I think there were ten on your head when I got back up.”


End file.
